


A Borrowed Life

by Destina



Category: Deadwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-01-04
Updated: 2005-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 05:01:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1115817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Destina/pseuds/Destina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"People have made good lives out of borrowed ones before."  - Sol to Seth, in Mr. Wu</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Borrowed Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [killabeez](https://archiveofourown.org/users/killabeez/gifts).



> Originally posted to LJ in January 2005.

Sol had a system for keeping inventory. Accountability was the watch word, as he liked to remind Seth from time to time. Seth, of course, was most accustomed to the word; he'd been born speaking it, born *to* speak it in a different context altogether, and this created a comfortable accord between them. "Twenty-five hoes and ten pick-axes today," Sol said, with a tilt of his head and a genuine shopkeeper's smile. "We are turning a tidy profit, I might add."

Seth looked up at him from over the desk, where his head had been bent for hours. "Well, now. Don't suppose that means we could finally afford to dip our hands into your precious inventory and withdraw an extra blanket or two?"

"If a blanket motivates you to get your feet on the floor early enough for a morning constitutional, by all means." 

Even the mention of the daily walk around town with Merrick was enough to provoke a grimace of extreme pain from Seth, who pointed his pencil at Sol. "If I was to be motivated, it wouldn't be by a fucking blanket, and it wouldn't be for no fucking constitutional."

"Point taken," Sol said. Shadows lengthened in the roomy space of this strange new hand-built home of theirs. The place still smelled of new wood and sawdust, but soon enough it would settle down into a reek of grease and kerosene. Sol put a match to the wick of a lantern and hung it on the post nearest to Seth, who paid it no mind; he only went on writing. "You planning to squint at the same ten sentences all night?"

"Twelve now," Seth said. He ran the dulled lead of the pencil between his teeth, sharpening it a bit, too preoccupied to bother scraping it down with a knife. 

"I can hardly wait to see how these fine citizens will take to genuine laws. Might cut down a bit on the number of side businesses hereabouts."

"Side?" Seth smirked at him. "Whatever business there is in town is front and center. Ain't no 'side' about it, Sol." 

"Not 'til you post those fine new ordinances, Sheriff," Sol said. Not that he was speaking about something Seth didn't know. Seth knew all the ways lawbreakers turned into fine citizens and back again; they both did. They'd seen it, done it, been at the center of it. No need to caution Seth about things he was bound to understand. 

Conversation not being the strong suit of their time together, Seth went back to writing out the most important of his thoughts. 

"Well then. You'll still be here in the morning?" Sol said, with the hint of a smile. Seth's pencil paused over the paper, then resumed its scratching. These were the things Sol loved the most: the quiet shadows falling over the dark wool of Seth's coat; the way he shrugged it off without patience and took to shirt sleeves when he felt too constrained; the way he would shake Sol awake in the wee hours of the morning to speak about the times ahead. 

These were the things Sol had built this store around, to enfold and keep them. Seth was made to be a lawman, but this was what Sol knew how to do. 

*****

When morning came, Seth was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs with the list in hand. Already the boards were showing signs of Seth's heavy boot back and forth, the well-worn tread of a natural pacer. "It might be beneficial to have another set of eyes," Seth said, and held the paper out to him. 

"Before I get some goddamned coffee?" Sol said mildly. 

"I set it to brewing not ten minutes ago," Seth said, in a wounded sort of way. 

"You know I mean no offense," Sol said. He poured himself some and eased down at the desk. "And now I am all ears."

"Anyways, you usually make the coffee," Seth said, holding the paper out in front of him like a limp peace offering. 

"The sooner you share your magnificent thought processes, the sooner we can open," Sol said, and Seth's eyes glinted with understanding. 

"I thought we'd start with the simplest. No killin'."

"Leastways not if you're not the sheriff."

"Or his duly sworn deputies."

"There is that." Just the smell of the coffee was fortifying. "Continue, please."

"No rapin'."

"Stands to reason."

"No stealin' horses nor other property."

"Does that count for the faro dealers stealing money, too, or is that a generalized kind of a thing?"

"Don't see how those that play faro expect anything but to be cheated, leastways not if they've got a brain in their fuckin' head."

"True."

"No beatin' women."

Sol looked steadily at Seth for a long moment. "You sure that comes in the proper place and all? In the rank of importance, I mean?"

"Considering what kind of place this is, I think so." Seth brandished the paper like a testimonial. "Kind of goes along with the prohibition against rapin'."

"So it does." 

"Here's where things get a mite tricky. Got to put up with the whorin' and the gamblin', but what about the celestials and the dope trade?"

"I'm thinking Swearingen might have an opinion on that."

"Not that I'd be caring about his fucking opinion," Seth said vehemently, and Sol snorted. 

"Bullshit."

"Moving on, then," Seth said, "no hangin' or otherwise molesting those who have a rightful place in front of a magistrate."

"Might be tough to enforce that one," Sol said thoughtfully, "unless you find you some deputies with balls."

"Shouldn't be too difficult," Seth said. "I'd be taking volunteers." His look was all too meaningful. 

"You'll be looking elsewhere," Sol said, smiling at him. "Go on."

"That's about all there is to it."

"That's not twelve."

"The rest are fanciful," Seth said, and folded the paper up. 

Sol leaned forward. "Go on," he said softly. 

Seth met his eyes, then unfolded the paper. Without looking at it, he said, "I was thinkin' that no man holding a position of public confidence ought to be taking bribes."

"Nor no woman."

"Nor no woman, if that should come to pass. Not sayin' it will, though. But if it should." Seth kept looking at him, and Sol let him see just how right he thought that was, just how right and good, and Seth flushed a little before he folded the paper back up again. "Too much fucking thinking before breakfast."

"You'll be having Merrick print that up in the newspaper, then?"

"Just as soon as I smooth out the rough spots."

"Seems fine to me." Sol rose and took the paper from Seth's hands, which were smeared with lead and ink, but were otherwise clean. They were hands that saved men, hands that could build, and they belonged here in this town, where men were destroying everything around them. "Let me. Seems like you should catch some shut-eye before we open."

"You'll be off ambulating?"

"That I will."

"Such a fine, upstanding citizen," Seth said, and sent him off with hat in hand. 

 

*****

It wasn't long before Seth was spending the majority of his time away from the store. Not that this was unexpected, but it was contrary to their agreement: partners in every aspect of the business, and no shirking for other enterprises. Sol had never figured Seth would dive right back into the deep end, though he should have. It was his failing, not Seth's; Seth was bound to be what he was, and Sol was bound by his failure of imagination. Still, Seth had known Sol wouldn't hold him to the promise, when it got right down to it, and Sol was agreeable to whatever Seth wanted to do. 

This was why Seth took to treading lightly near dawn when he crept in, and why he made the coffee from time to time, when he did. This was also why Sol sometimes took Seth's boots downstairs and shined them, or leastways brushed the dust off them and made them presentable again, and why he smoothed down Seth's coats and ties and steamed the grime from them. It didn't cost him much in terms of time, and it made him feel useful to more than just himself. 

Sometimes he could detect just the hint of a subtle perfume on Seth's collar, and those mornings, he hung the coat with special care. 

Seth got somewhat better at making coffee, though he never could master breakfast, even as apology. Neither of them could. It was easier on the trail, when the cookfire seemed to build itself and the bacon fried without their intervention. Sol was fairly sure those days wouldn't come again, but he liked to think on it, from time to time. 

"This goddamned hotel charges too much for food of this quality," Seth growled, with a bowl of hot, clumpy oatmeal at his elbow. 

Sol tended to agree. 

 

*****

Sol carried his chair out to the porch and planted it to the left of the door, near enough to hear what went on inside, and still close to the street. The town had sprung to life of a different sort, what with thugs and cowboys and drunken miners and all manner of lowlifes prowling the streets after dark. Torchlight made the town seem less ugly and gave a sparkle to the bare clapboard of the storefronts, but Sol knew the rot underneath was spreading. 

"You plannin' to do that all night, or can you spare a minute for relaxation?" he called back over his shoulder. Seth had a regular fixation on cleaning his sidearm, and nothing was more important, with the possible exception of his daily visit to harass Swearingen. 

In answer, Seth appeared beside him with a chair in one hand and a cup of hot coffee in the other. He handed the coffee to Sol, then dropped his chair and slid into it. "No call to be a shit-heel about it," he said, as he lit a thin cigar and kicked back the chair. 

For a while they watched the doings in the street, the never-ending stream of humanity as it flowed past the closed store. Evenings like this were rare, what with Seth so busy. "No place you need to be?" Sol asked. 

"Not presently." 

"Good, then." 

"I've been thinking, Sol. About my wife and the boy. There'll need to be a new house. Maybe not in town."

"I was wondering if you were considerin' it, or if you planned to bed them down in the storeroom," Sol said, though an unease had come over him of a sudden. 

"Be nice if I could stay here, but it wouldn't be presentable. Not with them to look after. Which, I should add, was the entire point of taking her on as a wife." Seth took a long draw on the cheroot. "Though I'd bunk here from time to time, providing that meets acceptable with you."

"It sure does," Sol said, looking at the clear sky overhead, far from the noise of the street. "This is your place as much as mine."

"I didn't want to assume."

"Well that's settled."

"As much as it can be." Seth passed the cigar to Sol. "She makes piss-poor coffee, you know."

"So you've told me."

" _Piss_ -poor." 

 

*****

 

After midnight - long past time to retire for the evening in civilized society - Deadwood was as noisy as mid-day. Drunks hollered and let loose with random gunshots; horses thumped their way through the muddy streets. Distant piano music matched the laughter of women, the imagined rattle of dice, and the clink of bottles and glasses. 

"Put the light out," Seth said. For a moment Sol thought this seemed off, that Seth should be out in the middle of town, putting a damper on the worst of it -- but when Seth pulled the covers back it was all right, everything was just fine. 

The floorboards creaked under the bedroll as they found their way down together, not tangled up just yet, but half in and half out of the confounded trousers. Seth's hands shook just a little, their cool purpose lost in such activities in a way they never were when a gun was involved, or a fist, or a pen to set down words. Sol knew it was right they should tremble, that they should be afraid of any damn thing that might try to put itself between them, because what they had was here. No cause to change that. 

Silence came up over them, or maybe just a sweetness of breath and voice, when Seth gasped his name ragged and true. They grasped at each other, bare skin like a shock of cold water, touching and traveling, coming back to the same place, the same starting point. Then they were silent again until sleep came to claim them. 

In the morning, Seth left early, without coffee nor a fresh-pressed coat, and Sol smiled into the crook of his arm when Seth pitched over the basin in his efforts to wash up quiet-like. Sol lay abed until later than his usual, and opened the store without apology at a quarter past ten. Once an hour, like clockwork, Seth came to the door to look in on things. Each time he stood quiet until Sol looked up, then favored him with a smile and a nod, and moved on.

When the miners came stampeding in near dusk, looking (as they always did) for loans tendered from the kindness of the heart, for credit instead of cash, trade instead of purchase, advice instead of business - Sol had no favors to give. Neither a borrower nor a lender be, his daddy once taught him, and Sol was not an apt pupil then, but he'd learned the ways of commerce and good relations in the time between. 

"Store policy," Sol would say, regretful to refuse all requests, and resolved to have Seth make him a sign as a reminder.


End file.
